Cooper engineering students George Kwiecinski and Zephaniah Odidika are advancing to the state level of this year’s New York Business Plan Competition (NYBPC) after impressing judges in the regional competition with their pitch for a pharmaceutical-focused startup.

Kwiecinski, a general engineering student, and Odidika, who is majoring in electrical engineering, are pursuing their student-founded startup Global Key Solutions, a platform that provides up-to-date regulatory and federal compliance data to assist decision-makers in the pharmaceutical industry. “We are passionate about pharmaceuticals and want to help advance safety across the entire supply chain and manufacturing process,” says Kwiecinski. The company’s software offers a data dashboard to better equip pharmaceutical firms for audit preparation and utilizes AI tools for quality revision and error detection.

NYBPC challenges college students from more than 60 institutions across the state to present their business plan in front of a panel of judges, awarding up to $100,000 in cash prizes to winning teams. Kwiecinski and Odidika visited Touro University Graduate School of Business to participate in the competition.

“We want to grow and scale our startup full time, completing programs here in New York City and regionally,” Odidika says. The students are currently working to foster an entrepreneurial network at The Cooper Union in collaboration with Maroon and Gold Labs, a nonprofit that supports entrepreneurial ideas led by Cooper students, staff, faculty, and alumni. Global Key Solutions was the 2023 recipient of a Maroon and Gold Labs grant.

Kwiecinski and Odidika will head to Albany on April 25 to compete in the NYBPC finals.